Yesterday, while on my way to the doctor’s office, my husband and I pulled into a local Tim Horton’s drive through. It‘s sort of routine for us, he orders an extra large double cream and I usually order a café mocha (chocolate, caffeine, whipped cream…what’s not to love?) We pull up to the window and the drive through attendant tells us that the lady in the car in front of us paid for our order.  For a moment we’re taken aback and then the wave of warmth flows through me; “What a wonderful thing for someone to do!” We take our order and try to catch up to the lady in the teal colored Buick to wave her our thanks, but she turned right and we turned left and I never got to thank her.

In this world that is filled with war and hate and crime, it is nice to have someone remind you of the general goodness of humanity. In this world where society has seemingly gone cold, we spend more time in front of our computer screens than we do getting to know the people living on our street; it takes nothing more than a simple random act of kindness to restore faith in the human condition.

This is the time of year when we are reminded to put others before ourselves and to be thankful for the things that we have. It is the time of year when we preach love and kindness, but too few of us actually practice the brotherhood that we preach. We go about our business with our nonsensical fa la la la la, but never really get into the true spirit of the season. We drive to the nearest mall or super center fight and cuss over parking spots, push and shove our way through the droves of people all searching for the perfect gift to give, one that is bigger or better or more expensive than the ones we gave last year. We look for that perfect expression of love, but it’s only the perfect expression based on the dollar amount. We clench jaws while waiting in check out lines  and mutter under our breath when the person in front of us is not walking at an acceptable pace and there is no way around them. We sit in our cars on busy roadways and flip off the guy that is actually doing the speed limit because we are in a rush to get to our various places of worship and then we gather in those places and put on our prettiest social faces, give thanks and praise and as soon as that hour is over we can’t wait to get out of there.

We forget that one simple act of kindness can make the difference in someone’s day. We forget that something as simple as a smile and a hello can sometimes literally save a life and so because I have been inspired by one simple act of kindness, I am going to issue a challenge.

I challenge every single person that reads this blog entry to perform one random act of kindness towards someone you don’t know. It might be paying for a coffee, it might be donating to a shelter; it might be giving food to a food bank or giving blood when you never have before. Perform that simple act of kindness and see how good you feel inside.
And when you find yourself the recipient of a random act of kindness, make a promise to yourself that you will pay it forward and share the joy you feel with someone else.

It’s easy… it’s cheap…and the profit is tenfold! Try it… you might like it!